In a potentially serious blow to Western Syria policy opposition groups have tentatively formed a cooperative Islamic bloc, with the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front the new group’s lead signatory. The move leaves General Salim Idriss, the head of the moderate Supreme Military Council and face of the secular opposition, “directly responsible for just a handful of small units.” Aron Lund has more, including caveats, calling the agreement “the rebellion of a large part of the ‘mainstream FSA’ against its purported political leadership.”

Juan Cole writes that the American strategy of supporting moderates “has now almost completely fallen apart” and that future concrete aid to the rebels is becoming less and less politically possible. Rania Abouzeid sums up the rebels’ message: “the Western-backed hotel revolutionaries jetting from capital to capital, claiming leadership in the political National Coalition and an interim government-to-be, don’t speak for them—and they won’t listen to them.” Daniel Larison fumes that “this news should also remind us that administration officials were misleading the public and Congress about the composition of Syrian rebel forces, and they were deliberately minimizing the role of Islamist groups in the opposition as part of their clumsy push for military action.”

The Council on Foreign Relations passes along an alternative view of the Syrian deal from Iranian Press TV’s Zaher Mahruqi. “While it will be naive to assume that Bashar will hold on to power indefinitely,” Mahruqi writes, “it is clear that the Syrian civil conflict will be a long term struggle and will not end nor conclude the way the US and Israel are hoping for.”

ABOUT US

Barbara F. Walter is a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist at the University of Denver. Joe Young is a political scientist at American University. Together, they edit this blog to provide simple, straight-forward analysis of political violence around the world.